1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for gathering information on a movable body by using a satellite communication system or another movable-body communication system such as a ground-wave digital communication system, a cellular phone and a DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication) system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A car navigation system for displaying the present position of a vehicle on a screen has been implemented and becoming popular. In recent years, a communication navigation system connecting a cellular phone to a car navigation system has also been implemented.
As a means for acquiring information on the state of a vehicle, partial history data is created at inspection of the vehicle at a car dealer and delivered to a complete-car manufacturer or a car-part manufacturer through typically wire communication instead of being created in a real-time manner.
As a means for acquiring information on the condition of a vehicle, in a dealer, there is provided a system for reporting partial history data at inspection of the vehicle. Since the frequency of the gathering of information is low and requests for vehicle inspection to be conducted at a dealer appointed by a complete-car manufacturer are uncertain, however, it is difficult for the complete-car manufacturer and a car-part manufacturer to create information useful for marketing of each car type and useful for statistical analyses and to feed back the information to a design team. In addition, as a movable-body communication technology, in order to gather and manage data of each car type produced by the complete-car manufacturer by using cellular phones, which become popular at a fast pace, it is necessary to obtain the phone number of each user. It is thus difficult to gather information on a plurality of specific cars and to distribute information in a collective manner.
Thus, information on the present condition of a vehicle is not collected continuously in a real-time manner. Even if the information is collected continuously in a real-time manner, the collected information is very limited so that the utilization of the information cannot help being said to be little. Continuous gathering of information on the state of a vehicle is indispensable to statistical analyses of the vehicle and the type of the vehicle. If there are no statistics, subsequent diagnostic analyses cannot be conducted as well.
It is thus an object of the present invention addressing the problems described above to provide a vehicle-information gathering method and a vehicle-information gathering apparatus, which are capable of continuously gathering information on the present condition of a vehicle in detail with a high degree of reliability in a real-time manner and capable of analyzing the information.
The present invention is characterized in that:
information on the state of a vehicle is divided into information on the position of the vehicle and other information such as information for controlling the vehicle, information on the states of car parts, information on the body of the vehicle and information on a part-replacement history of the vehicle; and
the information on the position of the vehicle can be acquired and gathered from a reflection signal obtained as a result of an artificial satellite""s reflection of a signal transmitted by an antenna provided on the vehicle to the artificial satellite.
The conventional vehicle-information gathering apparatus acquires information on the position of a vehicle from a reflection signal reflected by an artificial satellite as a result of reflection of a signal transmitted by an antenna provided on the vehicle to the artificial satellite and uses the information in car navigation. However, the conventional vehicle-information gathering apparatus does not collect and analyze the acquired information on the position of the vehicle.
Another characteristic of the present invention is a capability of analyzing a combination of the information on the position of the vehicle acquired in the way described above and other information. By utilizing the two characteristics described above, it is possible to accumulate detailed and reliable vehicle information in a real-time manner for each individual vehicle and to expect applications of the present invention.
To put it concretely, the present invention provides the following methods and apparatuses.
According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method for gathering information on a state of a vehicle, comprising: acquiring and collecting pieces of information on a position of said vehicle from a reflection signal reflected by an artificial satellite as a result of reflection of a position signal transmitted by an antenna provided on said vehicle to said artificial satellite.
According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method for gathering information on a state of a vehicle, said method comprising the steps of:
acquiring and gathering pieces of information on a position of said vehicle from a reflection signal reflected by an artificial satellite as a result of reflection of a position signal transmitted by an antenna provided on said vehicle to said artificial satellite; and
acquiring and gathering signals reflected by said artificial satellite as a result of reflection of information signals used for representing information on control of said vehicle or information on conditions of vehicle parts and transmitted from said antenna to said artificial satellite or transmitted by said vehicle through a wireless-communication apparatus such as a DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication) device or a cellular phone, whereby individual pieces of information on a state of a vehicle are gathered in a real-time manner.
In an embodiment, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method wherein said information on control of said vehicle or the information on conditions of vehicle parts are transmitted after said information on a position of said vehicle has entered a reception mode.
In an embodiment, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method wherein said information on a position of said vehicle is a latitude and a longitude obtained from a navigation terminal.
In an embodiment, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method wherein said information on control of said vehicle includes a braking amount, a steering angle, an accelerator-pedal angle, a gear count, an ABS (anti-skid braking system) operating time and a VSC (Velocity Suppression Control) operating time.
In an embodiment, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method wherein said information on conditions of vehicle parts includes a lubricant temperature, a lubricant pressure, a battery voltage, a fuel-residue quantity, a CPU state and a muffler temperature.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method for gathering information on a state of a vehicle, said method comprising the steps of:
acquiring and gathering pieces of information on a position of said vehicle from a reflection signal reflected by an artificial satellite as a result of reflection of a position signal transmitted by an antenna provided on said vehicle to said artificial satellite;
acquiring and gathering signals reflected by said artificial satellite as a result of reflection of information signals generated by a sensor provided on said vehicle and transmitted from said antenna to said artificial satellite or acquiring and gathering said information signals generated by said sensor and transmitted by said vehicle through a wireless-communication apparatus such as a DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication) device or a cellular phone, whereby individual pieces of information on a state of a vehicle are gathered in a real-time manner; and
acquiring and gathering information on said vehicle such as a car type and a vehicle number input separately for said vehicle and information on a user of said vehicle.
According to further aspect of the present invention there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method for gathering information on a state of a vehicle, said method comprising the steps of:
acquiring and gathering pieces of information on a position of said vehicle from a reflection signal reflected by an artificial satellite as a result of reflection of a position signal transmitted by an antenna provided on said vehicle to said artificial satellite;
acquiring and gathering signals reflected by said artificial satellite as a result of reflection of information signals used for representing information on control of said vehicle or information on conditions of vehicle parts and transmitted from said antenna to said artificial satellite or transmitted by said vehicle through a wireless-communication apparatus such as a DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication) device or a cellular phone, whereby individual pieces of information on a state of a vehicle are gathered in a real-time manner;
acquiring and gathering pieces of information on a state of said vehicle from a reflection signal reflected by said artificial satellite as a result of reflection of an information signal of said information on a state of said vehicle transmitted by a diagnosing system provided on said vehicle to said artificial satellite; and
acquiring and gathering signals reflected by said artificial satellite as a result of reflection of information signals used for representing information on said vehicle such as a car type and a vehicle number input separately for said vehicle and information on a user of said vehicle.
In an embodiment, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method wherein said individual pieces of information on said vehicle are input from an IC card having said information recorded.
In an embodiment, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method wherein said individual pieces of information on said vehicle are also input from an artificial satellite.
In an embodiment, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method wherein said collected individual pieces of information on said vehicle are encrypted and stored in a memory.
According to still further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method, said method further including the steps of:
based on the information collected in any one of claims 1 to 11,
conducting for each car type a statistical analysis on:
information on how much an installed new function has been used; and
information on whether or not there is a vehicle-utilization characteristic such as driving times on each day, driving days in each week and commercial use for each car type, and
storing statistics in a data base.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method, said method further including the steps of:
based on the information collected in any one of claims 1 to 11,
conducting for each car type a statistical analysis on:
information on whether a temperature is normal or abnormal;
information on whether a pressure is normal or abnormal; and
information on whether or not the number of years in which each vehicle part has been used so far is reasonable, and
storing statistics in a data base.
In an embodiment, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method wherein said collected individual pieces of information on said vehicle are used as a basis for collecting information on said vehicle as statistics for each car type and each vehicle part.
According to further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering apparatus for gathering information on a state of a vehicle, said apparatus comprising:
a vehicle-position-information gathering means for acquiring and gathering pieces of information on a position of said vehicle from a reflection signal reflected by an artificial satellite as a result of reflection of a position signal transmitted by an antenna provided on said vehicle to said artificial satellite;
a first vehicle-state-information gathering means for acquiring and gathering pieces of first information on a state of said vehicle reflected by said artificial satellite as a result of reflection of a signal used for representing information on control of said vehicle or information on conditions of vehicle parts and transmitted from said antenna to said artificial satellite; and
a second vehicle-state-information gathering means for acquiring and gathering pieces of second information on a state of said vehicle transmitted by said vehicle through a wireless-communication apparatus such as a DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication) device or a cellular phone.
In an embodiment, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering apparatus further comprising an IC-card-information input means for gathering information on said vehicle such as a car type and a car number and information on a user of said vehicle, which are entered separately for said vehicle, from an IC card having said vehicle information and said user information stored.
According to still further aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method for gathering information on a state of a vehicle, wherein said information on a state of a vehicle is collected by acquiring and gathering signals reflected by said artificial satellite as a result of reflection of information signals used for representing information on control of said vehicle or information on conditions of vehicle parts and transmitted from said antenna to said artificial satellite, whereby individual pieces of information on a state of a vehicle are gathered in a real-time manner.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method for gathering information on a state of a vehicle, said method comprising the steps of:
acquiring and gathering information on said vehicle such as a car type and a vehicle number input separately for said vehicle or information on a user of said vehicle first; and then
acquiring and gathering signals reflected by an artificial satellite as a result of reflection of information signals generated by a sensor provided on said vehicle and transmitted from an antenna provided on said vehicle to said artificial, whereby individual pieces of information on a state of a vehicle are gathered in a real-time manner.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering method for gathering information on a state of a vehicle, said method having the steps of:
acquiring and gathering signals reflected by an artificial satellite as a result of reflection of information signals used for representing information on control of said vehicle or information on conditions of vehicle parts and transmitted from an antenna provided on said vehicle to said artificial satellite; and
acquiring and gathering pieces of information on a state of said vehicle from a reflection signal reflected by said artificial satellite as a result of reflection of an signal of said information a state of said vehicle transmitted by a diagnosing system provided on said vehicle to said artificial satellite in accordance with a command to transmit a result of a diagnosis generated by said diagnosing system.
According to still another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a vehicle-information gathering apparatus for gathering information on a state of a vehicle, said apparatus comprising:
a first vehicle-state-information gathering means for acquiring and gathering pieces of first information on a state of said vehicle reflected by an artificial satellite as a result of reflection of a signal used for representing information on control of said vehicle or information on conditions of vehicle parts and transmitted from an antenna provided on said vehicle to said artificial satellite; and
a second vehicle-state-information gathering means for acquiring and gathering pieces of second information on a state of said vehicle transmitted by said vehicle through a wireless-communication apparatus such as a DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication) device or a cellular phone.